Pages

20 July 2012

No Salt – Fairfield’s Farm Crisps (@FairfieldsFarm) [By @SpectreUK]

I first thought that crisps with no salt or added flavour were a bad idea. Quoting the packet; “Just the great taste of our home grown potatoes”, and after some consideration, I started to warm to the idea. After all, my favourite flavour of crisps to eat whilst drinking good ale is Ready Salted. I always feel that some light salt and no heavy added flavour helps to bring out the full bitter taste in ale, rather than try to block it out completely. Having said that, Steak or Beef and Onion flavoured crisps do go very well with a nice creamy pint of stout.

Produced by Fairfield’s Farm Crisps, in Colchester, and served in a 40g bag these No Salt crisps had no artificial colours or preservatives, were vegetarian, vegan and coeliac (gluten intolerant) friendly, and were gluten and GM product free. Per 100g there were 473 calories, with 1.2g of sugar and 25.3g of fat. I first tried a packet of these crisps on their own and found that they really do have a good honest potato crisp flavour without any fuss of flavour or salt. Crisp after crisp convinced me that these No Salt crisps were a genius idea and should sit happily in the camp of Ready Salted, Salt and Black Pepper (not to everyone’s taste so a recent poll by Cinabar found), and Salt and Vinegar crisps. This camp of crisps may not be for everyone, and I certainly agree that any flavour of crisps can be a joy to eat on any occasion, accept, of course, with ale. That is a moment reserved for Ready Salted and, I can now verify, No Salt at all!